Troy Nelson

"The most glaring sound of the track is the bass guitar chords, which are absolutely drenched in the heavy feedback and high reverberation effects." Here's a tribute to this song from Yeah Yeah Yeahs' debut album: onetrackatatime.home.blog -- Here's a live performance on Conan in 2003: www.youtube.com

In 2019, The Horrors looked back a decade at "Primary Colours," the album "that changed how everyone felt about the Southend garage band.": www.loudandquiet.com -- Watch this full performance by The Horrors from a 2018 in-studio here at KEXP, enjoy: www.youtube.com

This song is part of the new EP (or epoch as Richard is calling it), "The Architect," which is out now on Merge. “I’ve always had a fascination with the concept of a ʻtraditional single release.ʼ How the industry tells you, in order to have a successful single, it has to be a certain amount of minutes to be played on radio, or streamed, or on a chart,” Richard explained. “I say f**k that. I never agreed with that construct. I wanted to create a single that was similar to a conceptual album. If you take away the idea that it has to be for radio, that it has to be a clean edit, that it has to be a specific thing in order to be successful, what would be the outcome? Epoch 1."

“As much as blindness as disability is romanticized, nah dude, that stuff ain’t romantic. That stuff impacts you in ways that a lot of people don’t think about,” Brittany Davis says. Seattle’s Brittany Davis was born blind and started recording music around the age of 13 when they were homeless. On this KEXP Sound & Vision podcast, they talk about their musical journey,: www.kexp.org -- Don't miss the official music video for this banger: www.youtube.com

U.S. Girls performed "Rage of Plastics" during a great KEXP in-studio session in 2018. Watch that entire performance: www.youtube.com -- Earlier this year, U.S. Girls (Meg Remy) released a live album, recordings of performances from 2018 through 2023, assembled in non-chronological order to mimic the feeling of a single show.: pitchfork.com

That's Dana Colley playing saxophone on this fine Morphine song. -- Beware those bees at the beginning of the video for "Honey White": www.youtube.com

Yard Act will be at The Crocodile on Saturday, June 8th, 2024. Their new album, "Where's My Utopia?," will be out in March. -- Written in the middle of tour as they watched their own rise to rock stardom, "Where’s My Utopia?" sees Yard Act incorporate influences ranging from Afrobeat to film scores to EDM. It’s billed as “a giant leap forward into broad and playful new sonic waters” for the Leeds band, who intersperse their recordings with strings, choirs, and even voice-acting clips. “The main reason that ‘post-punk’ was the vehicle for Album One was because it was really affordable to do, but we always liked so much other music and this time we’ve had the confidence to embrace it,” vocalist James Smith explained.

Tierra Whack is a rap-artist from North Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a teenager, she performed as Dizzle Dizz, but reverted back to her birth name in 2017. -- In the video for Chanel Pit, Tierra Whack delivers these lines in the car wash, sans car: www.youtube.com IG

Recognize that laugh? Little Simz is covering the Gorillaz here. Both she and Damon Albarn get writing credits. -- Watch her perform this cover live: www.youtube.com Someone wrote about the performance, "DAMN, she’s playing bass and rapping and singing. that’s HARD, I’m impressed. what a great cover :)" Someone else wrote, "I'm convinced she's also capable of sneezing with her eyes open."

Logic1000 is the reclusive, Sydney-born, Melbourne-based Australian producer of electronic music, Samantha Poulter.: www.allmusic.com -- See the official music video for "Grown On Me": www.youtube.com

Poolside will be at The Showbox on Friday, February 2nd, 2024. -- Poolside is the recording project of producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jeffrey Paradise. Here, they collaborate with Australian artist Panama (Jarrah McCleary). Although they finished the song in 2021, the artists passed it back and forth between Los Angeles and Australia for over a year "making sure it was perfect." poolside.bandcamp.com

Four Tet (aka Kieran Hebden) is featuring a hammered dulcimer/santoor here.: en.wikipedia.org -- The song samples Hari Om Sharan's 1979 song "Jai Jai Bajrang Bali."

That wonderful voice belongs to vocalist Skye Edwards. "Blackest Blue" is Morcheeba's tenth studio album. Here's a review: www.popmatters.com

Santigold (born Santi White on September 25, 1976) is a musician, songwriter and producer from Philadelphia. -- The title stands for New York’s Lower East Side. “It’s not a French thing,” White stated in an interview. On MTV’s FNMTV, Santigold stated that the title literally meant Lower East Side Artists. -- Here's the official video: www.youtube.com

Troy chatted with UK dance trio PVA in 2021: www.kexp.org He then welcomed them to his home for a visit this year!! They remixed the first single from Polachek's critically-acclaimed 2023 album, "Desire, I Want To Turn Into You." -- See Caroline Polachek perform the original live on The Tonight Show in March: www.youtube.com

“Hero Man” offers up a throbbing hook about an incapability to do anything (“Can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t go to work out, can’t leave”) and a gliding, insistent rhythm. The band’s Ella Harris says that the song is “an expression of this frustrated anger at masculinity and a resentment at being unable to free yourself from that and explore the world.” -- PVA were LIVE on KEXP in October. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to be notified when that session airs.: www.youtube.com

"Sweet Justice" is Australian singer and rapper Tkay Maidza's sophomore album and her first full-length in seven years, Enjoy this interview with the artist about the album: diymag.com -- "Out of Luck" is a collaboration with Lolo Zouaï and Amber Mark. Tkay Maidza describes this track as an "unapologetic song about moving on from a time waster and almost laughing at the lengths they go to try to return. It’s over."

"I've been nice and I've been naughty All the things that Santa taught me Mom and daddy never caught me P O L I C E report me..." Here are the lyrics: genius.com -- The infectious electronic duo from Brisbane Australia shared this ostensibly holiday track in 2018. www.confidenceman.com.au

This song was originally sung by Lou Rawls in 1966. -- Gloria Ann Taylor's version was originally recorded between 1971 and 1977 but didn't get reissued until many years later. In 2015, Ubiquity Records subsidiary label Luv N’ Haight released "Love Is a Hurtin’ Thing," a collection of Gloria Taylor's raw, psychedelic-tinged deep soul singles released on Selector Sound from 1971 to 1977, giving life to the debut album that never was. Learn more about the artist here: www.waxpoetics.com --

Watch a live performance by Jungle in our studio in September. That fine set included "Dominoes": www.youtube.com -- Jungle sampled Gloria Taylor's "How Can You Say It" from the album "Love Is A Hurtin' Thing."

Speaking of this track, Claud has said: “‘It’s Not About You’ is a song I wrote about people taking the things you’re going through personally. I experienced this heavily when I was first coming out and receiving reactions that solely centered on the other person focusing on how my identity was going to affect their life. It’s frustrating and isolating, so this song goes out to those who are experiencing backlash at times when they really need support.”

Julien Baker covered this song for the album, "Say Yes! A Tribute to Elliott Smith": www.alr-music.com -- Brooklyn Magazine writes about her cover here: www.bkmag.com

"Staying out all night We're all taking drugs Acting stupid, having fun Till the sun is coming up Might be too depressed...": Lost in A.D.D You're too optimistic But that's alright with me..." -- See the official video: www.youtube.com

"Loss of Life" is out February 23 via Mom+Pop. Watch MGMT pay homage to '90s alt-rock videos in "Bubblegum Dog." “We all saw the video for “Bubblegum Dog” as an opportunity to combine the charming, DIY, surreal, cardboard craft aesthetic of shows like Yo Gabba Gabba and The Mighty Boosh with these ultra-serious grunge videos we grew up watching on MTV – all that heavy, brooding angst smashed up against absurd childlike fun,” directors Julia Vickerman and Tom Scharpling say.: www.youtube.com

This is a collaboration between New Jersey artist 070 Shake and Kenyatta Lee Frazier Jr. , known professionally as Ken Carson, rapper, singer-songwriter, and record producer. It will be on her forthcoming album, due out in early 2024.

This album made a number of KEXP DJs "top ten" lists for 2023. Check out all their selections here: www.kexp.org -- This song was selected as a KEXP Song of the Day. You can download it for free here: www.kexp.org

Back in 2021, as part of the Daily Show, Michael Kiwanuka returned to the high school where he gave a special musical performance to sing "Rolling." Watch the performance here: youtu.be

In an exclusive recording for KEXP, Django Django performed Live from London in 2021: www.youtube.com -- Of the new single, the band’s Dave Maclean said: “This was a weird instrumental track that came out of looping some little chopped up bits of a studio jam. “I liked the odd groove of the track and I wanted a vocalist on there but I wanted something quite different, so I reached out to [Japanese rapper] Yuuko and she totally got it, and delivered this outstanding top line.”

Singer Blair Tramel and guitarist Connor Cummins formed Nashville punk band Snõõper in 2020 and put out 8-track recordings on DIY labels such as Computer Human, Goodbye Boozy, and Electric Outlet. For their live shows and the Third Man Records debut "Super Snõõper," they added Cam Sarrett on drums, Happy Haugen on bass and Ian Teeple on guitar. -- They gathered in an Austalian PBS Studio in July for a live performance of "Running": www.youtube.com

Middle Kids leader Hannah Joy co-wrote the infectious "Dramamine" with Tim Fitz, who happens to be her husband, and it captures some of the happy helplessness of falling in love. -- See the colorful “Dramamine” video, which Fitz co-directed with Nick Mckk: youtu.be

Songwriter A.C. Newman says : "I pictured this one as a weird little George Saunders-esque sketch, a snapshot. I found myself a lot more concerned with performance and/or delivery, changing melody and phrasing to get a better performance, less concerned, less precious about the original melody or lyric that I wrote. With that in mind, I had the idea of angels visiting me in the night with the message that “melody ain’t got nothing on delivery.” Kind of a fever dream, where feelings take on their own personality and shape."

They will be at The Showbox on Wednesday, February 7th, 2024! -- Prior to the October release of their first album in seven years, vocalist Alison Mosshart and guitarist Jamie Hince released two singles this past July for each of the US coasts - "New York" and "LA Hex". Read more about it and watch the videos here - www.stereogum.com

This is a cover of a song from the late Alan Vega, frontman of Suicide. Here's the original version: www.youtube.com -- Read The New York Times obituary of musician and visual artist Alan Vega, who died in 2016 at age 78.: www.nytimes.com

Vince Clarke wrote this song, which had the working title of "Operator." -- Dave Gahan was only 19 years old in this Saturday-morning television clip of "Puppets": www.youtube.com

"Enjoy the Silence" is the sixth track on Depeche Mode's seventh studio album, Violator. Here, it's getting the remix treatment. Written by the band’s creative mastermind Martin Gore, “Enjoy The Silence” was originally based on an organ and intended to be released as a ballad. However, it was Alan Wilder who suggested speeding up the song and after some time he managed to convince the other band members of the idea. Here's an investigation of the song: www.furiomagazine.com

On Saturday, January 20th, 2024, Seattle's Day Soul Exquisite will be celebrating the release of their EP, "Sanguine & Cardamom," with a BIG release show at Clock-Out Lounge.: daysoulexquisite.com -- Fronted by singer Francesca Eluhu, the QTBIPOC-led band is completed by multi-instrumentalists Zora Seboulisa (bass/guitar), Josh Pehrson (drums), Lillian Minke Tahar (keys), Thomas Arndt (percussion) and Xiomara Mills (saxophones).

"With his love for music tracing way back to an early age by dabbling with various instruments and then moving on to develop a passion for record collecting, Trus’me found his calling after learning the art of mixing and sample digging. Surrounded by the heads of Manchester and its deep rooted music scene, one couldn’t deny that it was an effortless task to be exposed to good music from all genres, thus explaining his constantly evolving tastes as evident in his eclectic DJ sets as well as in his uniquely, diverse productions." Read more here, enjoy: ra.co --- pnrecords.bandcamp.com